According to the Institute for Employment Research, IAB, employees in Germany worked about 1.2 billion overtime hours in 2024. More than half of them, 53.6 percent, were unpaid. The same figure appears in a parliamentary question in the Bundestag in 2025. The IAB count leaves out overtime that is later balanced through working-time accounts. Unpaid here means that the hours were neither paid nor taken back as time off.